M ARIETTA, Ohio — In the frenetic final days of the presidential campaign, GOP vice-presidential
nominee Paul Ryan yesterday beseeched voters to pause and contemplate what’s at stake. Speaking in
a half-filled auditorium at Marietta College, as 1,200 chanted “Three more days,” Ryan assailed
President Barack Obama for making the campaign about “small things” at a time when voters face a
monumental decision.

“We’ve got a big choice to make,” Ryan said in a 15-minute speech. “We’re not just picking a
president for four years; we’re literally picking the trajectory of this country, the meaning of
America, the kind of people we’re going to be, the kind of country we’re going to give our kids and
grandkids for at least a generation. That’s the kind of election this is.”

Picking up on a new line of attack launched by Romney at a Friday night
rally in West Chester, Ryan cast the GOP team’s interpretation on a comment that Obama made in
Springfield on Friday. After the crowd began to boo when Obama mentioned Romney’s name, the
president said, “No, no, no, don’t boo — vote. Voting is the best revenge.”

Ryan told the Marietta audience that Obama was “appealing to our lowest fears” by “
asking his supporters at a rally to vote out of revenge. Mitt Romney and I are asking you to vote
out of love for country.”

The Romney campaign is airing a quickly prepared TV ad emphasizing the same
point.

It was Ryan’s 11th day of campaigning in Ohio since Oct. 1, easily more than any of
the other candidates, and his second visit to southeastern Ohio coal country in the past 14 days.
Romney campaign strategists believe that Ryan, a Catholic, appeals to blue-collar voters and is
particularly effective in making a case that the Obama administration has been hostile to coal
production.

“Right here in the heart of coal country, we’ve got so much energy in this state,
in this country,” Ryan said. “Let’s use that energy in this state and in this country to put people
back to work.”

The Romney campaign’s message that Obama has waged a “war on coal” has gained a
foothold across eastern and southeastern Ohio, evident on ubiquitous billboards and in radio ads,
and by the “Ohio counts on coal” placards that Marietta audience members raised en masse.

The Obama campaign has countered that coal-industry employment has increased in the
past four years and that the president has invested $5 billion in clean-coal research, including at
Ohio State University and the University of Toledo.

Danny Kanner, Obama campaign spokesman, said that, despite Ryan’s assertions,
Romney “would never work across the aisle as president — all he’s ever done is kowtow to the
most-extreme right-wing voices in his party.”

“And Romney doesn’t have a pro-growth economic plan — he’s got a tax plan that
would raise middle-class taxes to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,
and a jobs ‘plan’ that could actually cost us 2 million jobs over the next two years,” Kanner
said.

While Obama on Friday heralded the addition of 184,000 jobs in October, more than
in any of the previous eight months, as a hopeful sign for the economic recovery, Ryan continued
the GOP team’s focus on a slight uptick, 0.1 percentage point, in the unemployment rate to 7.9
percent as evidence that Obama’s policies are failing. “The unemployment rate is higher than the
day President Obama took office,” Ryan said.

“We have a jobs crisis. Wouldn’t it be nice to have actual job creators in the
White House to deal with this jobs crisis?”

The GOP team’s criticism of Obama for policies that have held back the economy has
been a harder case to make in Ohio, where the 7 percent unemployment rate in September was nearly a
point below the national average. But the rate in the 14-county southeastern Ohio region — wholly
included in Appalachia — typically has been higher than in other parts of the state, except in
Washington County, where Marietta is the seat.

In Washington County, the unemployment rate in September was 6.1 percent, well
below the state average, and a significant improvement from the county’s 9.3 percent rate in
September 2009 during the worst days of the Great Recession.

Partisans at the Ryan rally attributed the improved local economy in part to the
shale-oil boom and were of no mind to give Obama credit.

“The president has had nothing to do with what’s going on here,” said Sharon Adams,
75, a former Marietta city auditor and county GOP chairwoman. “Coal has been our livelihood around
here. We need that coal. I don’t think he knows what’s happening.”